


The Mystical and the Divine

by OtoRose



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alcohol, Almost Kinda Phantom of the Opera, F/F, Found Family, Hero Worship, Mentor/Protégé, Mittelfrank Opera Company, Old-Fashioned Estradiol, Orphans, Safe For Work, Trans Female Character, Trans Lady Coming of Age, Transition, Trauma/Violence Referenced But Not Depicted, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings, choosing a name, lesbians are stronger than god and cannot die, sfw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-11-09 04:40:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20847665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OtoRose/pseuds/OtoRose
Summary: For all the glitz and glamour and prestige surrounding the Mittelfrank Opera Company, the lives of its performers are fraught, dangerous - and frequently short. Is it responsible to bring someone else into that world, to teach her beauty and grace and skill, when the life of a diva is so bright - but fleeting?





	The Mystical and the Divine

A long, exquisitely manicured nail flicked at the red-soaked end of a cork, sending it bouncing end over end across the table, where it caromed off of a half-full bottle of vile spirit-gum, and fell, tragically to join its comrades in a growing pile on the floor. Candles flickered in their barely green-tinted ceramic half-shells on either side of the mirror, an ingenious trick to see one’s makeup as a guest at the back of a grand hall, lit only by the saint-lights, might see it. The red roses in one of the vases beside the oval mirror had just barely begun to droop.

The Divine Songstress’s head came to rest on her arm, flat on the wood of her dressing table, smearing the foundation and rouge on her cheek, accompanied by a throaty sigh. 

She’d seen it. A gray hair. And not even into her third decade, yet. Thank goodness that the week was over, that there were no performances tomorrow. Not that it would have slowed the gradual death of the bottle on the table beside her, but it would at least make the morning that much more forgiving. 

She had decisions to make, and she was running out of time. For the all roses she received, for all of her thrill as she bowed and the supernumeraries stomped their feet behind her, she knew what she was. She was a bill of goods. A pretty face and a pretty voice. Both of which had very distinct expiration dates.

The glamour and mystique of being the Divine Songstress didn’t come without a price. She had her own room at the Opera House, the only Mittelfrank company performer to do so – but she could rarely leave it. She was beautiful, and all of Adrestia and beyond knew it – but no matter how many gentlemen and ladies sent her flowers, sent her confections and perfumed letters avowing their love, she could not so much as speak to them. If she were to allow herself to be courted, then nobody else would send her flowers and confections. The Divine Songstress would no longer be Divine, but only Manuela Casagranda. And her time with Mittelfrank would end. She would disappear and be forgotten.

A diva rarely made it past her twenty-fourth year. A chorista, twenty. A dancer? Sixteen, if she was lucky. A diva that refused a conductor’s advances? Fewer. And if you weren’t in place and trained by fourteen? There would be no hope. Manuela’s rise had defied the odds, and for a moment whispers had cautiously wondered if she weren’t blessed by Seiros herself. It made for a lovely story for the Company. And every night she’d prayed to that same Seiros that she’d push the wrinkles back one more day, keep her throat and lungs and diaphragm youthful, full, powerful for a moment or so longer.

She groaned, her head swimming with ghosts. She’d had enough that it was comfortable closing her eyes, but not so much that she liked what lurked behind them. The patrons whose hands she’d been made to kiss. The directors whose hands had wandered. The conductors – best not even to think about what they could command. Her rise had been meteoric, but hard fought, and painful, every step of the way.

It was enough to drive a woman to drink. She’d made history when a clumsy supernumerary tripped her onstage during recitative in her banner performance in Raptur De Lyonne and her leg had broken years ago, with a CRACK that echoed through the Opera House. She’d righted herself, stood without tears, and flawlessly conquered each and every aria, to the shock and admiration of the nobility. She was hailed as a true devotee of the craft, but everyone inside the Company knew what would have happened if she hadn’t stood. A decade later, her right leg yet ached.

The wine must be stronger than she realized – she could practically hear herself singing the aria, hear herself choking back tears…

Until she blinked her eyes clear and realized that she could hear the aria. It piped in a sweet trill through the air, barely audible through the walls, but clear, beautiful, as heartbreaking as she’d ever sung it. Mind still fogged, she drew herself up, threw a coat over her dressing-gown, and wandered out the rear door that led into the cold of the alley behind the theatre. Barefoot and bewildered she watched, as an urchin child, face smudged with soot and filth, eyes hid beneath a brimmed cap, sang into the night.

“Where did you learn that song?” The final notes rang frigid in the moonlit Horsebow dark, and the child met her eyes.

“Listening to it, out here.”

The Divine Songstress couldn’t make out the child’s face, her vision suddenly awash with damp and unwelcome sentiment. “I’m sure you’ll make an incredible tenor, someday.”

Their eyes met, the child piercing through tears and haze. “I’d rather not.” Manuela froze.

“Perhaps you should come in. It’s cold.”

The sentiment was sweet, but nevertheless, the small creature had to stand outside the door to Manuela’s room as she did her best to make it stately and accessible. But when it was done, the floor was marginally cleaner, the scent of flowers almost overcame the scent of spilled rich red wine, and cushions and blankets were laid out along the chaise in the corner.

“What’s your name, little one?” 

The child shrugged, long brown hair unkempt, chewing carefully on a baked tart Manuela had scavenged from an untouched gift box. Manuela couldn’t blame the poor thing for being cautious, and so she began to sing the same aria, in low tones. She had been praised by wealthy nobles, the elite of Adrestia, but something about the way the child’s eyes widened in wonder made her heart swell in her throat.

“That was you?” 

Manuela nodded.

“In the kitchens, we had a cat. Mama named it Dorothea. I always liked that.”

The songstress choked back her sorrow. “Dorothea, then?”

The girl smiled. 

The Divine Songstress soon snored loudly on the chaise, beneath a spare blanket, as Dorotha did her best to sleep in an unfamiliar bed, under a new roof, with a new name. 

The next day, Manuela introduced the girl to the crew that pulled the curtains and ran the props and rigged the saint-lights. Mostly old sailors – Dorothea might learn a few swear words from them, but she would be safe, and she scurried back and forth with colored prisms and powders and wigs behind the stage with them, learning the words and the whistles and the craft.  
The next week, at night Manuela took her down to the storerooms, beneath the chorister housing, as everyone slept, and played the old harpsichord that had been stored there. She taught the girl solfege, how to plant her feet and breathe from her diaphragm rather than her chest, how to lift her soft palate to make sounds round and pure. how to read Adrestian and then sheet music. Dorothea could read sheet music two weeks later, and devoured everything Manuela could teach. Manuela refused to let her sleep amongst the sailors of the crew, and finally compromised with the girl on a hammock, messily hung between walls in her room, which Dorothea adored for almost a full week before discovering she preferred more stable bedding. 

The next month, down in the bowels of the opera house, Dorothea learned how to support her breath while singing and dancing. Manuela gave her a small knife, and told her to keep it in her boot, and taught her how to move and lean if a man reached for her, so that his arm would snap. She taught Dorothea stage makeup, to shape her face however she desired.  
When she was satisfied with Dorothea’s progress, she introduced Dorothea to the choirmaster, who accepted his new recruit with unrestrained joy. 

And she wondered, with a horrible feeling in the pit of her stomach, how she could doom another girl to the fears she felt, give her a life where she could look forward to fear, to a future that could so easily be snatched away by chance. 

The next year, on the anniversary of the night Dorothea had joined her, she sat down with Dorothea. No surreptitious lessons or clandestine practice; she told the girl about the fear she felt. About the life that a songstress could look forward to. About the imminent expiry, if she should grow too tall, or break a tooth. 

Or if her voice changed.

Dorothea was no fool. She’d survived in the streets; she knew what loss was, and knew that anything would be better, if she could just push that loss farther away. A tenor might have lived to a ripe old age performing leading roles. But Manuela knew what Dorothea would say; it burned into her chest, to even think of asking. 

Dorothea was Dorothea. And she was determined to sing.

Manuela gave her a drink; it was a bitter, horrible brew. Dorothea gagged for a moment, when Manuela told her how to make it. But she drank it just the same. If she couldn’t manage that, she said, how would she ever become a songstress? She’d drink it daily, if it would let her be who she was. If Manuela could do it every night, so could she. 

Manuela nearly cried, and she drank, along with Dorothea, though only Manuela immediately washed it down with wine. She realized that in the last year, she’d hardly stared into that mirror once.

There was even more grey, at her temples, making silvery shocks. She’d hoped that this new contentment and direction might have slowed it, but it was imminent; the Divine Songstress’s time would soon be up. And when that ran out, who would protect Dorothea? At night, Manuela had prayed to Seiros to preserve her fortune; but Dorothea, a former street orphan, had no patience with Seiros. She prayed to Manuela, instead, for teaching her, and for saving her.

Lessons on self-defense almost eclipsed music lessons, in the lower halls. She taught Dorothea about the merchant over near the stables, and the merchant down by the market with the strange astringent powders. And Dorothea’s voice defied the odds, just as Manuela’s had – it lost no pitch, but developed a womanly range of expression, from fiery rage to cool contempt to trumpeting haughtiness. She gave Dorothea a dagger to strap to her leg, and then introduced Dorothea to the conductor. At the Opera, the conductor might as well have been the emperor, for all the prestige and power and money he commanded. Dorothea managed to subdue the gentleman, and she showed off her hard-won skill to his bruised and grudging amazement. 

The next day, the Divine Songstress had disappeared. The roses still arrived, but with no name written on the cards. They begged for a glimpse of the next wonder Mittelfrank had in store. And just like that, without a word of warning, Manuela was gone. The room was Dorothea’s now, the flowers were Dorothea’s. The spilled wine was, for lack of any willing owner, Dorothea’s. The small kettle used to brew restorative elixirs as well as those noxious nightly rituals was Dorothea. The conductor passed a new name on to the various rumormongers of Enbarr, and in that way the Mystical Songstress took up residence at Mittelfrank. 

With a bittersweet smile and genuine tears, she accepted all of the applause of her first night. The world knew Dorothea, knew her to be a woman, one they longed to hear. Her performances were widely considered finer, broader, sweeter and more authentic than the Divine Songstress – a worthy successor to the stage. Manuela, she knew, would be smiling for her, and praying for her. Ten times a week, Dorothea took to the stage, her technique honed to perfection, poised and graceful as any athlete. From the glow of the saint-lights, she looked out across the packed crowds, hoping one day to see the woman who had given her that chance.

Until one day, years later, in Horsebow. Dorothea sipped on the vile, equine-tasting brew. She could be certain that, wherever Manuela was, Manuela would be drinking with her. As she drank, she looked into the mirror, that awful keeper of time. No wrinkles. No white hair. No clouding of her eyes. No awful harbingers, but it did not matter. Dorothea could train her voice, coax her body into the shape she desired – but it would grey, it would crumble. And Dorothea would disappear from the room with the mirror just as swiftly as Manuela had. 

But Manuela had waited, had prayed to Seiros for one more day, until there were no more days left for her. Manuela had waited, trusted to the goddess and to her own wits to see her through whatever would come after. But some part of Dorothea still huddled outside the walls as the frost rolled in, clung close to the stone for shelter and for some scant warmth as she listened to the music inside. Manuela had a goddess and saint alike to trust in when her own talent ran out. But Dorothea was a princess in a tower of her own making. The building, its rich nobles and pompous men, would forget her as soon as she slipped, or the moment she missed her drinks and her voice fell apart, and she would be back in the alleys once more.

She ran a hesitant finger along the dagger she kept strapped to her leg. The saints and the goddess had done little for her, had not saved her from the scullery or the soot or the filth or cold. That had been Manuela’s doing. 

Dorothea would not be found waiting for age to sweep her away. 

She only took one bag. The old bottles on the table, the never-ending roses in their vases, the wine-stains long soaked into the wood. The kettle, the little wicker basket full of discarded red corks, the first hot bath she’d known, the silly hammock folded up in a corner of the armoire. They’d all belong to whoever next captured the stage. She would be nothing again. But Manuela had followed the saints when she left. 

Dorothea pulled the brim of her cap down and walked through the night-frosty streets of Enbarr. She would follow Manuela.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for taking the time to read this!
> 
> I really really adored all the subtext of the Mittelfrank Opera-related dialogues, and I adore both of our divas, and this is only a couple of days late for Dorothea's birthday. I nevertheless hope she'd accept with grace and aplomb.
> 
> If you came here from elsewhere, this is SFW, but much of my work isn't, fair warning. It'd been too long since I wrote something that wasn't just pure horny.
> 
> Follow me on Twitter! @otorosegarden


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